


Belief & Scars

by JumanjiiCostco



Category: Vampire: The Masquerade
Genre: Introspection, i honestly don't know what this is, lots of talk of cruelty, sort of toes the line between fic and meta?? i guess??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-23
Packaged: 2020-05-16 21:51:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19326805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JumanjiiCostco/pseuds/JumanjiiCostco
Summary: Regarding cruelty, kindred, and how far Eva has come since this whole mess started.





	Belief & Scars

The Kindred capacity for cruelty was unnerving sometimes. It was unfair to say that they were more so than mortals, only that they had more time to be and therefore less reason to regret. That, of course, was a blanket statement, a generality that was likely unfair. But it was true for the vast majority. 

Annabelle, of course, was the minority. The whole infinitesimally small percentage. Annabelle was better than them all.

Eva didn’t include herself in that specific minority solely for the fact of the matter that Maximilian Strauss was still undead and thriving. And as long as he was, she would be… afraid. And fear, like grief and sorrow and otherwise tragic things, made cruelty more palatable. Undeath had introduced Eva to the knowledge that she could stomach a lot of things. Even things she didn’t want to digest.

There were certain degrees of cruelty that, by the simple nature of what she was, were deemed necessary. Leeching the blood of the living like a common parasite was one. Intentional silence was another; the space around words can say just as much as the letters that make them up. Eva was well-practiced in intentional silence. If she, herself, could not be a colorful warning sign; if the rumors and reputation of her clan didn’t keep others at bay, then her silence would. Surely, that particular cruelty would. 

(The Undisputed Baron of the Valley being unable to take a hint wasn’t commentary on her ability to be cruel. It was on his tenacious nature. And perhaps on the kindness of his coterie.) 

The fact of the matter remained that Eva was familiar with many kinds of cruelty. The blood kind. The silent kind. The kind that left scars. And the kind that left no mark at all. Maximilian Strauss had been every kind of cruel: to her, to others, even to himself. But there was no martyrdom to save the Man in Red from his own demons. There was no amount of self-induced pain that would spare his soul from the flames licking at his heels. 

Not that he was trying. 

In all honesty, the capacity for cruelty that she felt for him was overwhelmed almost entirely by the notion that any action she took against him would almost surely require some kind of help. And there was no one deserving of the cascade of trauma that came with failing to complete such a task. There was no one who she could ask. 

(Having already made that mistake and renounced it was a different matter entirely.) 

Desperation could also make you cruel. And though she wasn’t desperate yet, she was less detached… than she’d been before. Than she’d been since the last time Strauss left her with a scar worth remembering, really. There was Jasper, which of course factored in. There was the rest of the coterie. There were the Weird Sisters and Chloe, both… varying degrees of independent and dependent on her for guidance. There were those in New York. Baron Abrams. 

The strings tying her to other people were many and varied. And despite her best attempts to feel otherwise, Eva was so very tired of being alone. 

So rather than externalize her cruelty, rather than lay it on Strauss in this moment, in this ill-fated time where they once again occupied the same city… she chose to bury it. To only let it hurt herself, if she need hurt anyone. 

Neil Gaiman had once said how terrible it was to love, how it made you vulnerable to things that would otherwise bounce off of your armor. But that was the cruelty of love, wasn’t it? The trick that kept you coming back: vulnerability, for all the fright it induces, and friendship, for all the weaknesses it can give you, both feel like freedom. 

And when you have an infinite stretch of time to be Unalive, freedom, friendship, and love are the only things that keep us kind. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write about Eva for a while, and even though I'm still not totally sure what this is, I'm pretty sure I like it. So I hope y'all do too.


End file.
